Oh, And When I Get Up to Speak!

I've made the commitment to attend four weekends in Chicago within the next six months, speaking to a room of among 150 to 200 people. There was a time when I wouldn’t have conceived the thought of being a speaker in a room of any sort, much less a room so large. I still get chills to think of it. This though I find quite fascinating, and definitely a necessity to share with you. Each time I prepare what it is I will discuss when called upon. Then, when I finally slowly walk to center stage (or wherever it is that they placed the “mike” this time,) and look out into the room of faces, some of which are familiar to me; that speech I did prepare quickly, leaves my mind as if it never did exist. You see somewhere between the time I walked into the room and the time it comes for me to speak, a new thought has just been placed into my head with regard to yet another new lesson I’ve just learned. It's now this new lesson that takes center stage from anything that might have not so long ago been the issue. God, in his infinite wisdom, decided to plant the seed of something more important than what yesterday there seem to be.


I’m not quite comfortable while waiting on the sideline to take the “mike," but only find true calm when the thoughts at once begins to flow. It’s moments like this that God inspires me in such a way that I might only be able to define as some sort of divine intervention. For I could not have come up with some of the thoughts that so easily and authentically flow except when I am fully present and being in the moment. I’ve had very little formal college education, and my worldly knowledge has been somewhat limited. I can tell you that for a fact, indeed. I'm more than willing to learn from any teacher who crosses paths with me. I don’t dare tempt the fate of God though and go up there on that stage unprepared, with such an assumption that each time He’ll place a better thought into my head that fits the moment truer. I would also be a fool indeed to think that I was the creator of such profound and touching thoughts that trickle in gentle, yet powerful, whispers from my lips.


Yet, I’ll tell you true, it’s in those times of authenticity and being fully present to the people that I couldn’t tell you after, word for word, what it was I had been saying. Thoughts flow so swiftly and race even quicker from my lips. I’ve been told by those who would teach you to be a speaker and truly possess the quality to share, that if you are “in your head” about what it is you're saying, then you are truly “in your head." But they tell me that sometimes when they listen to me, they know and it's quite plain to see that I’m not in my head. They say that I’m so fully self-expressed and fully generating that it lends the room to being fully open and in the moment with me. Sometimes as I stand facing the audience, the still in the room is more than apparent. It’s so quiet that I can hear my own heart beating and it’s as if they were listening also to the rhythm coming from my want to share with them.


Those who listen also say they do so quite intensely because I often sit without speaking for so long a time that they know when I finally do, “I’m going to let something rip,” that they wouldn’t want to miss. That’s their choice of words, not mine. They tell me also that it’s in those times when I allow myself to be quite vulnerable and share and be a cause for people that they see me making a larger contribution to all who listen. They tell me that when I stand up to speak, I’m so full of life that others can’t help feeling better to know me, and I enroll them so that they begin to feel lifted also with my spirit, to either laughter or to tears. Even in those times when I evidence my willingness to speak my mind though I might look bad, I stand there with my integrity in tact for all to see. Whoever would have guessed? Certainly not me! Although I may intellectually accept and see some logic in what I’m being told; the practical knowing which I possess still finds it necessary to be convinced, beyond a doubt. Then maybe I could begin to believe that who I know myself to be and who they see me to be are but one and the same person. But I’m still gathering evidence on this one.


There are those moments too, when I do feel somewhat confused and embarrassed, when people seek me out during a lunch or dinner break and explain how connected they feel to me and how deeply I touched them with what I shared. I in turn begin to inquire what it was exactly that they heard. Then we begin to share, but this time in a “one-on-one.” As I listen to it coming from within their own being, I do remember what was spoken that touched them so. At that very moment I so want to weep; to hear so much a part of me in them as we together speak. Did you ever notice the shift in our viewpoint when we concentrate on our similarities that abound in all our humanity instead of the lesser differences?